Chapter Eight - Dimitri
I didn’t expect her back.
Four years. Four years of searching for the ghost responsible for nearly dismantling everything I’d built, and she’s sitting in that boardroom like she owns the air in it.
She’s older, wearing professionalism like armor that doesn’t quite hide the woman underneath.
Janice Woods.
The name had appeared on the team roster Marcus sent over, and I’d stared at it for a full minute before my brain processed what I was seeing. It’s a common name. Could be a coincidence. Could be someone else entirely.
It wasn’t.
I knew the second I walked into that conference room and her eyes met mine.
Recognition flashed across her face—shock, then fear, then something that looked like resignation.
She recovered quickly, I’ll give her that.
Smoothed her expression into careful neutrality and squared her shoulders like her entire world hadn’t just tilted sideways.
Mine had.
The meeting was supposed to be reconnaissance. Assess the firm, determine if they had the strategic capability to rebuild our public image after the exposé’s lingering damage. Standard business.
Then I saw her, and standard business became impossible.
She’s different. Not just older—though four years shows in the confidence of her posture, the way she holds herself without apology.
Her body has filled out slightly, curves more pronounced in ways that make my hands ache with muscle memory.
The soft slope of her hips in that pencil skirt, the way her blouse pulls across her chest when she leans forward to take notes.
It’s more than physical. There’s a sharpness to her now, a guardedness that wasn’t there before. The girl who’d challenged me about gentrification with idealistic fervor has been replaced by a woman who understands exactly how the world works and has made peace with participating in it anyway.
It makes her more dangerous, not less.
I watch her throughout the meeting, cataloging every detail. The way she twists her pen when Marcus talks too long. The slight tension in her jaw when I address her directly. The careful neutrality of her expression that doesn’t quite mask the pulse hammering visibly at her throat.
She’s terrified. Good. She should be.
When she speaks—defending narrative construction with the same intelligence she’d once used to evaluate my development projects—something twists in my chest. Pride, maybe.
Or recognition. She learned this from me, whether she wants to acknowledge it or not.
Learned to see the gap between reality and perception, learned to navigate it strategically.
I taught her how the world works.
Then she used that knowledge to try to destroy me.
The irony would be amusing if it didn’t make me want to reach across the table and—
What, strangle her? Kiss her? Force her to explain why she thought she could walk away after burning my empire to the ground?
All of the above.
“That depends on whether you’re willing to change the reality,” she says, and I have to suppress the urge to smile.
There she is. The woman who wouldn’t back down, wouldn’t play it safe, wouldn’t pretend comfortable lies were the same as truth. She’s still in there, underneath the professional polish.
Still dangerous. Still mine.
The thought surfaces unbidden, possessive and irrational. She was never mine. Three months four years ago don’t constitute ownership, no matter what my body remembers about the way she’d responded to my touch.
I accept the contract before I’ve consciously made the decision.
Request her specifically as primary strategist because I need to know if she’ll run or if she’ll stand her ground. Need to test whether four years have dulled the edge I’d sensed in her or sharpened it into something that could actually threaten me.
Need her close enough to confirm what I already suspect—that Janice Woods orchestrated the exposé that nearly destroyed everything I’d built.
Once I have proof, there will be consequences.
***
Felix finds me in my office that night, long after everyone else has gone home.
“You accepted the proposal,” he says without preamble.
“I did.”
“Why? We have three other firms pitching better strategies at lower cost.”
“None of them have her.”
Felix goes very still. “Her.”
“Janice Woods. The intern from four years ago.” I don’t look up from the contract I’m reviewing. “She’s their primary strategist.”
“You’re certain it’s the same woman?”
“Completely.”
“You think she’s responsible for the exposé.”
“I know she is.” I finally meet his gaze. “The timeline fits. The level of detail fits. The motivation fits. She’s the only person who had access to enough information to connect those dots.”
“Suspicion isn’t proof.”
“Which is why I need her close enough to slip. Close enough to reveal something that gives us leverage.”
Felix crosses to the window, hands in his pockets. “This is dangerous, Dimitri. If she suspects you know, she’ll bail.”
“She already knows. She looked at me like I was pointing a gun at her head.”
“Then she’ll be careful. Guarded.”
“Everyone makes mistakes when they’re scared enough.” I close the contract, push it aside. “I want full surveillance. Phone, email, anywhere she goes that isn’t her apartment. Find out who she talks to, what she searches for, whether she’s still in contact with anyone from ProPublica.”
“Damien won’t approve.”
“Damien doesn’t need to know. Not yet, and not until we have proof.”
Felix turns back to face me, pale eyes assessing. “What happens when we do, when you can prove she nearly destroyed us?”
Good question.
I imagine dragging her into the same gutted warehouse where this all started, making her understand exactly what her investigation cost. Lives disrupted. Territories lost. Blood spilled to reclaim what the exposé took from us.
I imagine watching her face when she realizes the full scope of what she did—not just damage to my business empire, but the ripple effects through the entire Bratva structure. The people who paid for her idealism with broken bones and disappeared opportunities.
I imagine her on her knees, begging for mercy she won’t receive. The fantasy should satisfy something dark in me.
“We’ll decide that when the time comes,” I say instead.
Felix nods slowly. “What will you do if it wasn’t her?”
“Then I wasted some money on a marketing contract, and we all move on.”
He doesn’t believe me. I don’t believe myself.
After Felix leaves, I pour a drink I won’t finish and return to the window. The city stretches below me, indifferent and eternal. Somewhere out there, Janice is probably in her apartment, processing the same shock I felt in that boardroom.
Wondering if I know. Calculating her options. Preparing for whatever comes next.
My phone buzzes. A message from the surveillance team Felix already has in place—because of course he does. Felix anticipates everything.
Subject arrived home 7:47 PM. No outgoing calls. Laptop activity shows internet searches for “Rudenko Industries,” “breach of contract,” and “conflict of interest disclosure.”
Smart. She’s already looking for ways to extract herself from this situation.
I won’t let her.
***
The next three days, I’m consumed by thoughts of her.
In meetings, I catch myself wondering what she’s doing. Whether she’s already strategizing campaigns for our account or trying to find loopholes in the contract that would let her walk away. Whether she’s sleeping, or if memories keep her awake the way they do me.
Whether anyone has touched her the way I did.
The thought ignites something violent in my chest. Four years is a long time. She’s twenty-four now, beautiful in ways that have nothing to do with conventional standards and everything to do with intelligence and curves and the particular challenge she represents.
Of course someone has touched her.
The idea makes my blood boil in ways I have no right to feel.
Oleg notices during a Thursday meeting about the Battery Park acquisition. I lose track of the conversation somewhere between permit timelines and projected ROI, mind drifting to the way Janice had looked at me across that conference table.
Terrified. Defiant. Still so goddamn beautiful it physically hurts.
“Dimitri.” Oleg’s voice cuts through my thoughts. “Did you hear what I said?”
“Repeat it.”
“The holdouts on the third floor are threatening legal action. Claims we’re violating tenant rights laws.”
“Pay them off. Triple their relocation package if you have to.”
“That sets a precedent.”
“I don’t care about precedent. I care about moving this project forward. Handle it.”
Oleg exchanges a glance with Felix but doesn’t argue. The meeting concludes, and I’m left alone with Felix’s too-knowing gaze.
“You’re distracted,” he observes.
“I’m fine.”
“You haven’t been fine since that boardroom meeting. You’ve been obsessing.”
“I’m pursuing a lead on the exposé investigation. It’s all due diligence.”
“Is it?” Felix leans against my desk. “Or is this about something else entirely?”
“Meaning?”
“Meaning I’ve known you for twenty years, and I’ve never seen you lose focus like this. Not over business. Not over threats. The only time you’ve ever been this—” He pauses, choosing his word carefully. “—consumed was four years ago. With her.”
I don’t answer. Can’t answer without admitting truths I’m not ready to examine.
“She’s a liability,” Felix continues quietly. “Whether or not she wrote the exposé, her presence in your orbit creates risk. Damien will see it. Others will see it. You need to decide what you’re actually after here—revenge or something else.”
“I know what I’m after.”
“Do you?”
He leaves before I can respond, and I’m alone with the question I don’t want to answer.
What do I want from Janice Woods?
Justice for what she did? Revenge that makes her understand the cost of crossing me? Proof that lets me finally close this chapter and move on?
Or do I want her on her knees for entirely different reasons?
I imagine it too clearly: Janice in my penthouse, stripped of the professional armor, naked and vulnerable and finally admitting what we both know.
Admitting that she never stopped thinking about me.
That four years didn’t erase the memory of my hands on her skin any more than it erased my memories of her.
I imagine breaking down whatever walls she’s built, making her understand that we’re so deeply intertwined, we’ll always find each other again. That some things can’t be undone with distance and time and anonymous exposés.
I imagine her curves yielding under my hands, her breath catching when I touch her the way I remember, her body betraying every defense her mind constructs.
The fantasy is vivid enough that I have to force myself to breathe normally.
This is dangerous. Desire compromises judgment, and compromised judgment gets people killed in my world.
I should hand this off to Felix. He can manage the surveillance, build the case, deliver the proof when it’s ready. I can keep myself at a safe distance where Janice Woods can’t distract me from what matters.
I should.
I won’t.
Somewhere underneath the rage and the need for revenge, there’s something else. Something that flared to life the moment I saw her in that boardroom and hasn’t dimmed since.
Want.
Raw, irrational, completely inappropriate want.